Who Does Speed Work?

[Joel]

I'm intersted in hearing what - if any - type of "speed work" my
fellow Randonneurs do in the course of a regular year's riding, and if
people do do speed work what they change - if anything - in PBP years.

I'm a typical "middle to back of the pack" rider and try eyery year to
improve my long distance cruising speed. Usually with agonizingly
small results. We all know how different a long Brevet - 400, 600,
1200K - can be if you are faster and therefore have more time to
allocate off the bike for sleep, eating, etc. It's a totally different
event for the fast riders than for the slow riders. I'm always in awe
of the fast Randonneurs (some approach mutant category in my eyes with
how fast they are) and wonder if people continually work on their
speed or whether they have a certain amount of speed "talent" that
they are able to maintian just by riding events along with other rides
but w/o planned "speed work".

So, what do people do in the course of a normal and/or PBP year
besides riding brevets, double centuries, etc on a regular basis to
work on speed - if they work on speed at all? What's your typical
riding week? Do people do intervals - flat and hill? Do they do
shorter rides (say a 60-70 mile ride fast) occassionally as fast as
possible? Do you do speed work all year round? Weekly? Etc

I'd love to hear what other people are doing on a regular basis.

I'm trying to do intervals once a week - Moderate intervals which for
me means 20 minutes at 85% Max HR, repeat 3x with 10 minutes rest, etc
and alternate sessions of hill intervals of with 10 minutes climbs,
etc. The rest of the week I do one long ride - 70-100 miles - and
several shorter rides of 16-35 miles working on spin, recovery, oform
or lower cadence to strngthen leg muscles, etc.

Joel

[Mike Sturgill]

Hi Joel,

I definitely do "speed" work, but I don't "train." I ride weekly club rides
with a very fast and competitively friendly group. We ride different routes.
Some weeks have lots of traffic lights - interval training. Some weeks have
lots of climbing. In all cases, the rides are fast, most averaging over 20
mph. The distances are usually 45-70 miles in length.

I also commute to work a couple times a week. It's 32 miles each way and I
use these short rides to see how fast I can go. I only do these with speed
in mind when I don't feel fatigued. When I'm tired, I just ride and enjoy
it. Also, in Phoenix, the evening rides home are like riding in a blast
furnace, so speed is fairly immaterial on these segments.

I have never developed a desire to "train." For me, personally, I find it
boring and don't enjoy it. When riding with my club, I always enjoy the
rides even when I go home and collapse. They have helped me tremendously
with my long distance rides.

You are exactly correct when you say that being able to ride faster yields
many options. I've found empirically that my fastest 400, 600, and 1200k
times have been achieved when I've spent the most weekends with the fast
club rides. So, my experience says that there is a correlation between speed
work and "fast" ultra rides.

Oh, and I do this type of riding whether in a PBP year or not.

-Mike

[Kris]

Exercises and intervals to raise your lactate threshold will make you
faster in longer rides. Short intense efforts do help a great deal in
developing your 'distance pace'.

If you can make strides to raise your LT that means your pace while
riding just below will improve. I have found mountain biking to be a
great way to achieve sessions of intense short efforts without calling
it training.

[Sam Huffman]

I'm a solid front-of-the-middle-of-the-pack rider. I'm curious to hear
what others have to say as well.

I don't "train" for speed or distance; my typical ride is a short
(20-30 mile) after work ride maybe once or twice per week, and my long
rides are local brevets and an occasional (maybe monthly?) longer solo
ride (50 - 100 miles) just for fun. I don't ride much at all in the
off-season. For the year so far I'm at about 4000 miles, of which well
over half are brevet miles.

I pretty much always ride at what feels like 85% effort, because going
harder makes me tired, and going slower is boring. For shorter rides I
usually ride hills the whole time. Maybe that qualifies as intervals?

I've seen my time for brevets decrease slowly since I started riding
them a couple years ago. I'm not sure whether to attribute it to
increased top-end speed, or just experience at riding longer distances
and keeping controls shorter. Regardless, it's definitely not the
result of a training plan.


Sam

[William Beck]

Doing high-intensity intervals two or three times a week really does
seem to make a difference in cruising speed on longer rides. I usually
do them twice a week -- using a Spinervals DVD in the middle of the
week and by going hard on the uphills on a shorter (~40 mile) weekend
ride. The Spinervals DVDs help me maintain the "uncomfortable"
intensity that is needed to have the desired effect. Coach Troy will
not let you slack off!

When preparing for a long ride (like PBP) I have tried doing two long
moderate-pace weekend rides vs one long ride and a shorter, high-
intensity ride. The combination of a moderate-paced long ride with a
fast-paced shorter ride seems to work better (lead to a faster time in
the event). Lots of long slow miles do seem to train you to ride long
and slow. (I guess doing some fast hill intervals during the two long
rides might be the best of all.)

Finally, it seems like the "half-life" for high-intensity fitness is
only a few weeks. If I skip doing the Spinervals for two or three
weeks, I get noticeably slower on the road and the next Spinervals
session feels much more difficult. But it only takes a few weeks to
get it back.

Bill

[Ingle, Bruce]

> I'd love to hear what other people are doing on a regular basis.

I have a 33-mile round trip commute; I've generally been in the faster
half of local finishers lately.

Saturday or Sunday: every other week or so, a brevet or other long ride
depending on schedule. Sometimes it's two weekends in a row, sometimes
three weeks between rides. Pick up groceries on the off day with a
trailer (about 7 miles, easy).

Monday: commute easy, core and upper body strength training at home if
Sunday was a rest day.

Tuesday: commute easy.

Wednesday: drive to work in the morning with a bike and leave the car at
work. Leave late and commute home with the Wednesday night Fitness and
Masters ride, leaving the group about halfway through the loop to go
home. About 26 miles with about 1/2 hour maxed out or nearly so,
depending on the selected pace (the ride has several groups at different
speeds).

Thursday: commute easy, drive home if not riding Saturday.

Friday: commute easy, drive home if riding Saturday.

If the thought even enters my mind that I'm overtrained, drive. Same if
I'm finding reasons I shouldn't ride.

When cycle commuting, it's generally better to err on the side of too
much rest than too much speed work, and training needs to be flexible to
accommodate this. For example, I've been pretty tired this week from
hard rides two weekends in a row, so I took Tuesday off and am planning
to take Thursday and most of the 3-day weekend off as well.

Before I turned 33, I was able to get away with two sessions of speed
work during the week without getting overtrained. These days, I need a
bit more rest, so I've substituted a session of strength training
instead.

- Bruce

[Tony G]

These are my opinions and experiences only and you should base your
own training on what you can safely do.
There is a real simple concept that anyone who wants to go faster
needs to grasp.
"If you want to go faster over a longer distances, you must first be
able to go reasonably fast over a short distance and be able to do
that at least a couple days a week! So in other words, if you do not
train your body to go fast, you will not be able to go as fast as your
body is capable of going."

Most people only have a limited amount of training time which includes
rest and recovery. In that time there must be a reasonable balance
between speed, distance and recovery based on the level of fitness an
individual is currently at.

True speed work (very short intervals less than 30 seconds or sprints
less than 15 seconds) for most people can only be done 1 or 2 days a
week, because the body has to recover between workouts and should only
be done if you are rested and warmed up properly before your workout,
otherwise you will get injuries.

Longer intervals can be done a couple days a week as well as really
long intervals (10 to 20 min). From my experience these longer
intervals help me to feel better at the end of brevets or ultra races
and train my body to go the longer distances at a certain effort.
There is still a need for recovery between efforts even within a
training session. You get better performance gains for each discipline
by keeping the effort near what you can maintain for the full duration
of the effort. So if you are slower at the end of a planned training
effort, then you either need to slow down slightly or shorten the
effort. When you slow down towards the end of an effort you are not
getting as much benefit out of that effort as if you could have
because of ways the body responds to training.

Recovery rides at low efforts are needed. Some days it is 1 to 2 hours
at the bottom end of the aerobic range and other days it is all day
just a little higher with a couple short medium efforts thrown in
spread way apart. There are also full days at steady mid aerobic
efforts. Training ride vary from 90 minutes to 15 hours for non
events. Groups are good to ride with but that ride has to fit into
your training plan/progression so you don't hurt something otherwise
you would be better to ride solo or with someone that understands or
show up and purposefully drop out at a certain planned point in the
ride.

A couple other factors that really affect your longer distance times
are body weight and nutrition during the event. An individual person
can only put out so much power, so think about your power to weight
ratio.
Can you improve that by eating more healthily on a regular basis and
loose any extra weight. If you don't have any weight to loose, then
the only option is to get stronger over time with proper progression
of workouts and efforts. Equipment improvements may help, but how much
can you afford and how reliable is the equipment. I'll something that
is just slightly heavier if its durability is what I really need for a
self supported event.
You must be able to consistently take in and digest a reasonable
amount of liquid and calories during an event for your body to keep
working especially at some of the higher efforts we try to maintain
during an event.

A couple things than anyone needs to considers are, how long does it
take you to do an event now and how long do you really want to do that
event in and can you train consistently to get to that goal. For most
a hit and miss attempts will not get you there.

Generally my training gives me at least 8,000 miles per year for the
last 7 years. Training weeks (not event weeks) vary from 150 miles to
500 miles throughout the year with several individual weeks off spread
out thru the year. Usually I'm not the fastest rider, but I usually
feel good when I get done and feel like I can ride more.

Have a good day!
Tony G

[Greg]

I recently read in Jan Heine's "Bicycle Quarterly" an article about
interval training for speed and for climbing. Up until that point I
trained for riding long distances by riding lots of long distances.
Willing to give it a shot, I started doing hill repeats, but not the
way that was described in the article. There are a couple long, steep
hills nearby, and so I'd ride a couple miles over to the bottom of the
hill to warm up and start riding as hard as I could until I needed a
break, then I'd back off in a lower gear until I felt I could have
another go at it. I repeated this until I got to the top. I would
include 2-4 hills like this and then ride a couple miles to my house
as a cool down. The whole thing took 1.5 - 2 hours instead of my usual
5 hour route with more miles and less climbing.

The other thing I did was to stop riding for a couple weeks before a
big ride. This allowed me to rest up, recover, and renew my enthusiasm
for riding. I now think that doing lots of long rides - for me -
builds up a cumulative fatigue. Keeping the training rides short and
intense, and resting before big rides doesn't allow that fatigue to
build up.

When I went on a 214km permanent in May, the results were noticeable.
I was surprised to find myself at the top of climbs faster than I'd
normally get there, and with less effort. I lopped off about an hour
off my time for nearly the same route, from last year.

So, for 2009, my schedule will be built around hill repeats done in
the service of long rides. and the only long rides I'll do are event
brevets. By keeping my long riding down, I hope to be faster in them.

Greg

[JBilinski]

> (I guess doing some fast hill intervals during the two long
> rides might be the best of all.)
>

I think you're probably better of keeping the high intensity workouts
separate from the long slow training. My background is in running, but I
imagine the same applies to cycling. The high intensity workouts whether
they be hill repeats, or group training rides with fast riders, or other
high intensity exercise are most effective when you are well rested
physically and mentally (but warmed up of course). I think that if you
do this type of riding more than once a week your enthusiasm for this
type of exercise will less than if you do it less frequently and the
intensity and benefits won't be as high. On the long rides I believe you
are best to make an conscious effort to not go too fast, instead saving
the intensity for the other work out types. Then you can also do some
medium intensity and distance rides. When I do hill repeats (usually a
set of five) I aim for even times for all 5, with the first couple being
of lower effort and the last couple being with the highest effort. Not
sure how scientific this is, but it's what I am in the habit of doing.
Jacques

[Antti]

What I have found is that the power I can maintain on longer periods
drops about 8-10 % when the duration is doubled. E.g. if I can hold
270 Watts for one hour, I can hold ~250 Watts for two hours, ~230
Watts for 4 hours, ~210 Watts for 8 hours and maybe 160 – 180 Watts
for the whole PBP duration. So the key for improving the performance
over brevet distances and durations is to improve the power one can
hold for 1 hour, and this is typically trained by 2 * 20…25 min
intervals close to the 1 hour power, or little longer workouts as 1…2
hours slightly below the 1 hour power. These were the workout types on
which my major training before PBP’07 was based on. Compared to the
PBP’03 when I trained more on the distance basis, like ~100 km rides 2…
4 * week, the result was that my time dropped from ~79 hours to ~73
hours. Of course, great part of the improvement were due other
factors, as riding on my own instead of the group ride on the way to
Brest on 2003, and carrying enough food with me so there were no need
to stop for eating before 300 km and thus getting rid of the major
queues on the controls.

[JBilinski]

> I also find that the benefit of speedwork, while they fall off
> quickly initially (the full effect lasts maybe 3-4 weeks), the
> remaining fitness tapers off very slowly. I still am riding on my
> form from last year's PBP, and even with almost no training this
> year,
Yeah, it is true that the benefits of speed work fall off very rapidly
(a few weeks), but this doesn't mean you should do speed work only a few
weeks before the event you are training for. It is the combination of
speed work and low intensity distance cycling that is the key to
building endurance. When you do speed work the long distance lower
intensity training naturally gets faster (at the same effort level) and
this in turn builds more endurance.

Re the long lasting effects of endurance training, I have noticed this
myself too when an injury or change of lifestyle causes me to almost
completely stop training. I am amazed at how long it takes the body to
lose it's fitness base. I guess it takes time for the heart to atrophy
and the whole cardiovascular system to revert back to 'couch potato'
state.

Jacques